And that really is the lowest of the low for a sports fan.
The team you support is picked early on in your life and that is it. You can not change. They are yours. For better or for worse. And luckily in the past 15-odd years, it has been for the better.
But it has not always been like that.
There have been some lean years. Decades really.
It was little Bobby Stokes who started it. And he was not even playing for Manchester United.
Stokes played for Southampton and it was his goal that won the FA Cup for his team in the final against Manchester United in 1976.
The losing team in red was one I liked, for reasons still really unknown - maybe I felt sorry for them - and it went from there.
The following year United came back and beat Liverpool in the final with Jimmy and Brian Greenhoff to the fore, along with the likes of Steve Coppell and Lou Macari.
So the support continued, via those three-month-old Shoot ! Magazines. Reading what Jimmy Greaves had to say and predictions on games which had been played eight weeks beforehand were eagerly consumed.
It is amazing how much technology has changed. Now any news more than a day old is considered past its use-by date.
United did all right in the cups but the league was the holy grail.
But it just would not happen. Bryan Robson would get injured, the strikers could not hit a barn door, the defence was average. And they never had a decent goalkeeper.
There were some horror signings - Garry Birtles, Alan Brazil, Peter Davenport - and the league seemed totally beyond reach.
Alex Ferguson came on board after Ron Atkinson was sacked and he looked all at sea for a while. He signed guys like Mike Phelan, Danny Wallace and Ralph Milne.
United looked likely in 1992 but blew it and Leeds, of all teams, won the league.
But the next year the league was won at long last, and it has been pretty much success ever since.
In a perverse sort of way maybe it would be good for the United success to go away for a few years so the popularity would disappear and only the hardened real supporters would remain.
But not really.
And to all those people who say United are lucky, all teams have their luck. And we are due.
There was a game in the mid-1980s against Chelsea where United was completely all over them. If it was a boxing match it would have been called off.
Yet somehow, Chelsea went down the other end and scored the winner through journeyman striker Kerry Dixon.
We've had our 20 years of bad luck. Now we're just making up for it.
Steve Hepburn
ODT rugby writer
• Team: Manchester United.
• Sport: Football (though I still call it soccer).
• Fan since: 1976.
• Favourite player: Probably Ryan Giggs, though always liked Paul McGrath and Gordon Hill.
• Greatest moment: Finally winning the league in 1993 and the treble in 1999.
• Been to Old Trafford?: Once, in 1992, v Everton, 1-0 I think, goal by Andrei Kanchelskis.
